A "significant shift" is taking place in the IT sourcing channels of European SMBs IDC reports, with "3rd platform" technologies (such as social media, Big Data, mobile and cloud) impacting SMB needs. 

"This transition is changing SMBs' needs toward more complex solutions which require more support and value-added services from channel partners, and triggers a shift in IT sourcing toward system integrators, high-end VARs, and public cloud service providers," IDC says. "This trend is particularly evident among high-end midsize organizations."

According to the analyst the channel remains vital for IT vendors going for SMB customers, and both vendors and channel partners can target SMBs more effectively by learning how they select IT sources.  Read more...

Gartner and IDC agree on two things regarding the Q2 2013 PC market-- Lenovo is the top WW PC vendor (beating HP) and, as we all know by now, shipments remain on the decline both globally and within EMEA. 

According to Gartner EMEA PC shipments drop by -16.8% Y-o-Y during Q2, the 5th consecutive quarter of decline. The analyst attributes the decline to a combination of usage trends shifting from notebooks to tablets and channel inventory reductions in anticipation to future Haswell-based products. 

W. European shipment levels are described as "weak," with low PC replacement rates, E. European customers go for Android-based tablets and MEA finds tablets and smartphones the more attractive options. 

HP is the top Q2 2013 EMEA vendor according to Gartner, thanks to better results within professional PC space. Following are Lenovo (the only vendor seeing shipment growth), Acer, Dell and Asus.  Read more...

Dr. Doug Engelbart, father of the computer mouse and many other PC and internet technologies, dies age 88 in his Atherton, California house of kidney failure.  

Born in in Portland, Oregon on 25 January 1925, Engelbart started working on computers in the 1950s when he had an "epiphany" involving a computer screen full of different symbols-- a vision, probably inspired by Navy radar consoles The New York Times suggests, of what we can recognise as a computer workstation desktop.

In the 1960s Engelbart established the experimental Augmentation Research Centre (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute (SRI, later SRI International), where he developed a number of revolutionary technologies first shown off at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference, California. 

During what Silicon Valley calls "the mother of all demos" Engelbart demonstrated not only his 1964 invention, the mouse (a collaboration with mechanical engineer William English), but also text editing, video conferencing, hypertext and windowing within a remarkable creation called oNLine System (NLS).  Read more...

Gartner revises its 2013 global IT spending forecasts from 4.1% to 2% growth-- spending will reach $3.7 trillion (up from $3.6tr for 2012) due to a still declining PC market and fluctuations in US dollar exchange rates. 

"Exchange rate movements, and a reduction in our 2013 forecast for devices, account for the bulk of the downward revision of the 2013 growth," Gartner says. "Regionally, 2013 constant-currency spending growth in most regions has been lowered. However, W. Europe's constant-currency growth has been inched up slightly as strategic IT initiatives in the region will continue despite a poor economic outlook." 

According to the analyst devices spending will grow by just 2.8%, with little recovery expected for H2 2013 as new devices fail to offset the decline in PC sales.  Read more...